Maren and I had a busy first half of the year. So much of our winter/spring adventure is a tried-and-true routine that we don't think about updating the blog as often. Here are some highlights of the usual stuff and some of the UNUSUAL stuff from the last 6 months.
January, February and March were the usual Florida locations. We still enjoy volunteering at the Tampa RV Show in January but spend the rest of our time on the east coast in state, federal, county parks depending on what reservations we were able to get so many months in advance. It continues to be harder to get reservations and, like purchasing concert tickets online, others often get there first. Somehow it works out. Next winter's state park reservations were made months ago. The federal parks reserve 6 months out, so we try to fill the state park gaps then. We recently rebooked our December plan as the rent went way up! Sometimes we hold on to overlapping reservations just to make the cancellation decision later. You never know what a summer hurricane might do to your plans (like last year when hurricane Ian closed numerous campgrounds for months!).
Maren used the winter months to do some personal maintenance -- starting with her tooth implant saga. Step 1 was a sinus lift procedure and post implanted in late January. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th steps will wait until we return to Florida this fall and hopefully she'll leave next spring with a new tooth! She also had a surgical procedure during our March visit near Gainesville. The surgery was scheduled last November around our travel schedule, so non-emergency, but our careful planning almost blew up when the hospital called the day before to cancel due to odd pre-op EKG results. We immediately drove back to the pre-op center to plead her case and they finally agreed to proceed after vetting her lack of any cardiac symptoms, yet active lifestyle. Getting a robotically assisted surgical suite and doctor aligned with our RV schedule took a lot of work and we would not be denied!
The surgery was successful with no issues and, after we moved up to Raleigh, Maren saw a cardiologist and even his EKG machine showed a different odd result, as did several years of EKGs from her annual physicals. Software! One cardiac echo later, he said everything looked fine and that this was apparently just her "normal" and she is apparently proficient at confusing EKG machines.
On our way to Raleigh we stop in South Carolina to get the yearly maintenance for Max the motorhome's Freightliner chassis. This year was a big $$$ maintenance year as the "do it every" 2,3,4 year cycles all coincided, plus we had 4 new tires for the rear at $600 + installation, each! Yes, the motorhome is 12 years old now and we've just started our 12th year full-timing! We purchased Max in November of 2011 and moved in June of 2012 -- the years have just flown by.
This year's big plan is to get to Calgary/Banff Canada for an August meet up with Sheila and some of Maren's Canadian relatives that still live in that area. Our route there has, so far, included the Harpursville area of New York to visit one of Maren's favorite zoos again. Animal Adventure Park has changed a lot since our last visit 5 years ago and they now have a drive thru park too. Being a member, Maren gets us in for free, several times before we moved on.
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| Maren with AAP's sweet giraffe bull, Oliver |
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| AAP's 3 little girl lion cubs |
Our next stop was Niagara Falls with a stop enroute at the Syracuse Zoo (twin baby elephants!). The smoke from Canada was very bad for several of the days but we got to see the incredible falls and check out the Buffalo zoo.
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| Very rare twin elephants -- only ones in the U.S.! |
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| Niagara from the U.S. side |
Next up was the Erie and Toledo zoos, followed by a stop in Indiana for a refrigerator repair. We had the cooling unit part upgraded last year, but were having a little trouble with it. They elected just to replace the cooling unit again and this year's model is a big improvement from last year's version. Let's hope we are now good for many years, although we do like visiting this area. The Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend was the next stop and then we were on our way to Winnebago in Iowa.
We had a few intermittent problems for Winnebago Service to look at, but Murphy's Law, they all refused to act up while we were there, so it was a quick, inexpensive, frustrating stop.
Our next stop was to Rochester, Minnesota to visit my mom's two sisters. We had a quick visit with both and helped aunt Margaret empty out an under-stair storage area that she wanted to clean out. It was a quick task with all three of us handling it. Aunt Louise's health has been deteriorating since we saw her last year. We were really glad we stopped by as she passed away only a few days later. She was an amazing woman, a long time teacher who touched many lives and will be missed by all that knew her.
We next moved on to Duluth for a week around the busy 4th of July travel period. We usually try to get off the roads around holidays to avoid the road craziness, but campgrounds will always be crowded/crazy around holidays too. Of course we couldn't pass up seeing the Lake Superior Zoo and also do some shopping at Duluth Trading company. We closed our Duluth visit with a BBQ dinner ride on the Lake Superior Train. We are now continuing our march west at a pretty good clip.
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| Us with the famous Duluth aerial lift bridge |
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| Google maps kindly tracks our progress. Here is June! |
